(This post is the sixteenth of what will be approximately seventy posts following 820th anniversary highlights of what history now calls the “third crusade.” My novel, The Swords of Faith, tells the story of this legendary clash between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.)

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Winter in Sicily was finally over. It was time to complete the last part of the journey to join the western Christian fighting pilgrimage to take back Jerusalem for Christianity. 820 years ago today, Richard the Lionheart, along with his huge fleet of over two hundred ships, left Sicily for the eastern Mediterranean coast to join the siege at Acre. He was eleven days behind Philip II of France; he would land at Acre well beyond that eleven day gap, and the consequences of the delay would have lasting effects on the entire area. After the ships cleared the harbor, Richard’s warship vanguard took the lead ahead of the transport ships. On one of those transports, his future wife, Berengeria (whom he planned to marry in the “Holy Land”) and his sister Joan, traveled with their accompanying entourages. The ships communicated by sailing close enough for the men to shout at each other and pass messages and commands from ship to ship. It would not be long before this primitive method of ship-to-ship communication would prove to be dangerously inadequate. Richard hated traveling by sea. Nothing about this journey would give Richard any reason to change that point-of-view!